trawling through some image folders, came across these photographs of the three postcards i made for rca secret 2015.
i made the effort to photograph them at the time, and now i am wondering whatever happened to the postcards. my secret distraction.
did they sell and raise some cash for my old college? i think maybe not, and they have since been resigned to the skip of art. the rca have previously stated few remain unsold after the exhibition [so there are some]. unsold cards are not returned to the artists.
[three secret postcards 2015]
thinking about my cards, wherever they may be: the first three are numerals [3, 6, 9] based on wooden printing blocks, although i flipped the original design. i was influenced by metal signage at the time.
rca secret is all numbers: numbered cards on display, long queues, a secret raffle to select the first fifty buyers through the door, selling cards and raising a lot of money for student fees. then after the sale, matching names with numbers, or numbers to names. my postcard numbers [as discovered on the rca website]: 1724, 1875, 2098.
the number three: everywhere, nearly every day: on a door, in tiny details in photographs, pondering on the red ’33’ painted on the backrest of my vintage swivel draughtsman’s chair, which was rescued from a skip at the college where i used to work – as this seemed significant – and two threes made six, another red three, and that made nine… i was looking out for three numbers. 1-2-3 may have been a simpler combination, but there was something quite cheery about the rounded shape of the figure nine, and it looked like a lowercase little ‘g’.
the number 33 studio chair has since lost any sense of swivel, so maybe the college skip was the best place for it after all. nevertheless, it’s a moderately pleasing piece of vintage furniture, with black tubular steel legs and a curved, ergonomic wooden seat [with some surprising graffiti], and it’s naturally in a design partnership with my parallel-motion drawing board [that i acquired for free in exchange for a small collage]. there is less need for this type of design studio equipment with computer-aided design, i guess. but i digress… it’s just a ‘high’ chair [but chairs can be lethal, as i discovered while casually reading the times newspaper the other day]
[secret postcard to dubai]
for the fourth postcard, for the rca’s newest fund-raising venture, rca secret dubai, i reclaimed [re-used] the off-cut pieces from the number cards to make a new collaged piece with a more pronounced 3d appearance. the assembled curves and overlapping shapes also appeared to evoke a middle-eastern aesthetic.
my secret postcard to dubai, where some millionaires reside, where the world’s most ambitious buildings are being constructed, where everything looks expensive, shiny, and new… and i was reconfiguring various cut-out scraps of already recycled card into a new mini-artwork for an international fund-raising art event in dubai. seems fair.
rca secret: supporting the next generation of fine artists in their post-graduate studies.
can’t resist commenting on my own blog.
i quite like playing with words & doodling with anagrams [and trying to write poetry, but that’s another story]
the other day, i had a go at the times cryptic crossword [supposedly the most difficult crossword in the entire world], but i didn’t get that far. only solved six clues, then i gave up. the exercise felt like the mental equivalent of taking the stairs …in a high-rise building. with bags of shopping. possibly in dubai.
i do worry about my mental health sometimes.
i used to be quite good at cryptic crosswords [well, the one in the daily telegraph – which is not a reflection of my political leanings]
nevertheless, it’s still a relaxing and pleasantly distracting armchair/sofa activity on autumn evenings.
i just don’t see how chairs & sitting down can be lethal, when it has been suggested by some scientists that doing puzzles & crosswords can [in theory?] extend one’s life.
i may need to research the research on this…
rca secret is heavily promoted in the media on the famous artists who have secretly contributed [it’s a good hook] and the value of those works [trophies] among the ‘unknowns’. the long queues, many camping out overnight to be at the front, reflect this conspicuous desire – curiously similar to the buying frenzy after the launch of a new Apple product.
with 3000 postcards on display in the 2015 exhibition, it must have been a challenge to find the real ‘stars’ – but buyers could browse all the cards on the website, making a note of the numbers.
some of the postcards are sardonic responses to this miniature art world.
can’t see on the website the selling price of the postcards, but i think that this year it was raised to £55.
in this regard, there is some social ‘cachet’ in acquiring an artwork by a famous artist for comparatively little money.
some postcards are later resold on ebay [maybe intentionally bought for that purpose?]
each year i have contributed to ‘rca secret’ i get a special invitation to the private view, but it’s strictly ‘admits one only’ and the train fare is quite a lot of money to be one of a crowd.
must be a great evening, all the same.
I must thank you for shareing all your fantastic exprimental artwork! I have been following your site for some years now, and it’s always exciting and a source of inspiration to see and read. I am a exprimental artist myself, and like to study different materials. I’m from Sweden, but lives in Norway.
Have a nice day! MoNica
thank you, much appreciated. not sure it’s that ‘fantastic’, just an opportunity to try something out, with the ‘abstract’ collaged piece evolving out of the cutout numerals.